If you click on the photo below it should take you to a facebook album of pictures of the location where we’ve been shooting the music video for “Call to Awaken”…
Be sure to ‘like’ the historian facebook page to get the latest updates and behind the scenes material…
I put this quick video out because the new historian facebook page hit over 100 likes. I also created a historian twitter feed – @greygriffon.
download Hyenas.mp3
(right click to download)
I’m still in post production on some new higher production value music videos, and I appreciate all the support and sharing of my work in the mean time. Thanks, and stay tuned.
There’s a bunch of squawk on the web coming from people who think that feathered dinosaurs aren’t scary. On behalf of anyone who’s had hands-on experience with or even basic working knowledge of bird biology, please, shut the fuck up. Birds are fucking creepy murderous motherfuckers. Don’t believe me? Watch this documentary in which it takes several big beefy australian rugby player type dudes to tackle down a partially sedated Cassowary which, despite being half their size, could kick their guts out.
(disclaimer: this is an hour long documentary – but if you jump to 22:25 you can see dudes tackling a drugged up dinosaur)
And that’s a fruit eating dinosaur! That’s sorta like your run of the mill Oviraptorid, except that it’s never had to run from a Dromeosaur. That’s the “Six foot turkey” the ugly fat kid in the beginning of Jurassic Park thinks ain’t shit. And it’s been roofied multiple times. And to anyone who can look at a cassowary and say “it would be scarier if it were brown and scaly like the raptors in Jurassic Park” I say that you are wrong. Not only do all those black shaggy feathers make it look like a nightmarish abomination emerging from the shadowy forest of a Jim Henson fever dream, but they also make it way harder to see which of its legs is going to kick you right in your twat. It’s like the red feathers that traditionally decorate the end of a kung fu spear to distract the opponent, except the whole animal is both feathers and kung fu and both its feet are spears.
Cassowary Kung Fu
I mean, HOLY SHIT. Indoors-only city folk who think that feathered animals aren’t/can’t be scary have clearly never spotted a barn owl with their flashlight while hiking alone at night. Let me explain: a barn owl in that context basically looks like the ghost of a dead Korean child sitting in a tree, that can turn its head completely around, fly in total silence, locate a rat by sound alone, and then snatch it with its ratchet-tendon talons from its hiding place in long grass.
Or better yet, check out a baby barn owl regurgitating the compressed bones and fur of the mammals its mother stuffed in its hook-billed squawking mouth.
Now imagine a big shaggy weirdo like that cassowary, but with the talons of an owl and it’s 20 feet long. Oh, also it has jaws with the crush force of a crocodile and the serrated teeth and septic bite of a komodo dragon. That’s what the little baby bitch cousin of T-Rex was. A murder-saur called Yutyrannus huali (which I choose to believe was named after some ancient kung fu master who could kick you hard enough to crumple your ribcage). Oh, but unlike t-rex it had relatively longer, frighteningly strong, creepy taloned hands emerging from its blood and shit flecked plumage to grip you to its fuzzy, death-smelling breast with. Don’t think that would make a horrifying mind-fuck of a movie monster?? REALLY!??!?
I disagree.
I just watched Jurassic Park in the theater for the first time in 20 years and it’s such a goddamn solid movie that it actually managed to make me mad about the recent announcement that the upcoming Jurassic Park 4 won’t feature any feathered dinosaurs. While I’m sure the new movie will have a line or two about how the JP dinos are genetic amalgams to explain away the lack of paleo plumage, what bothers me is that without a doubt the real reason for doing this is to maintain the “look of the brand”… which is exactly what the first Jurassic Park worked so hard to get away from – depicting dinosaurs according to their traditional reptilian image. The credibility and believability of the entire film is predicated on the idea that dinosaurs were more like birds than modern reptiles – from Dr. Grant’s first memorable child-traumatizing monologue to the final shots of the film which show a flock of pelicans flying along side Hammond’s helicopter as Dr. Grant smugly looks out at them like “god damn son, i really know my shit.” And twenty years later, what really holds up about the film’s dinosaurs is their distinctively bird like behavior. The tyrannosaur assaults the Ford explorer like an eagle pinning and picking apart a carcass, the raptors stalk about like huge murderous roosters, the dilophosaur has the spookily inquisitive yet suddenly aggressive temper of a cassowary, even the Brachiosaurs move and honk gracefully like a flock of giant swans. It was all thrillingly unlike anything we’d ever seen before, but despite all that, the new movie promises more of the same. That’s particularly sad when you consider that by todays scientific standards the design of the original JP dinosaurs is downright bland. Without a doubt the artistry and animation of the dinosaurs is gorgeous (especially for the time), but imagine if that level of special effects wizardry were applied to brilliantly colored and plumed creatures, reflecting our modern understanding of dinosaur soft tissues and their propensity for outlandish display structures… I submit to you, that would be visually stunning, and at times, downright frightening
…aaand here is the original frame from Jurassic park that I painted over:
In an effort to get my latest work and updates to people more easily I have created a twitter account and facebook page for the historian himself. While this website (dontmesswithdinosaurs) will remain the main source and archive for content, the facebook page and twitter feeds will be updated with links to new work here as well as updates and news on upcoming projects and events so that humans who regularly check their facebook and twitter can stay in touch and up to date more easily.
Stay in touch.
Like I said a few posts back, I’m trying to do more quick live rhyming videos just to keep things moving while I finish larger projects. This is another one of those.
download Swamp Kung Fu (beat by MUJO).mp3
(right click to download)
I’ve spent a decent chunk of my life wandering around in reservoirs, creek systems, swamps, and rainy forests and I’ve always felt particularly in my element in those semi-aquatic environments. This rhyme and video are basically about that, and the creatures and ghosts I’ve encountered along the way.
I wrote this verse a while back and didn’t know what to do with it. Recently while listening to Mujo’s Lo Shinzuru beat collection I realized his beat titled “Sangwoon Hero” fit these rhymes perfectly. I got in touch with him and he gave me his blessing to put this video out. I encourage you all to check out his work and if you like his style consider showing your support by buying his beat collections on his bandcamp page, or licensing his beats for your own musical efforts.
I made this illustration for a top-secret project I’m working on in collaboration with Matt Wedel (more on that later). I also submitted it as an entry in the All Yesterdays Contest for speculative reconstructions of extinct creatures, hosted by the authors and illustrators of the book ‘All Yesterdays’.
Subadult Diamantinasaurus licking minerals in a cave illuminated by bioluminescent cave glow worms of the family Mycetophilidae.
The main idea behind this illustration is that in the 120 million years that dinosaurs ruled the earth, at some point they most likely entered caves, and perhaps even large dinosaurs entered them. As discussed on SV-POW, modern elephants enter caves to exploit their mineral resources, and it was Matt Wedel’s suggestion that perhaps sauropods also did this at some point in their lengthy natural history.
Here are some close ups of their heads and necks showing speculative scale patterning and armor, based partially on Saltasaurus, and partially on modern reptiles. The spines along the bottom of their necks and abdomens are meant to be keratinous, serving both display and defense functions, much like modern Australian Bearded Dragons (Pogona), Thorny Devils (Moloch) and the Horned Lizards of western North America (Phrynosoma). Also featured are highly reflective scales on the head and neck, similar to the modern skink Proctoporus shrevei , which may serve as adaptations for species recognition or to startle predators in low-light environments such as dark forests or caves (also, to look rad). Another speculative feature of the integument are elongated hair-like scales on the snout, which are meant to be a sensory adaptation, similar to a mammalian whisker, to help these large animals navigate in dark environments.
Cave exploring Diamantinasaurus with reflective display scales, and sensitive whisker like scales.
As I was thinking about doing this illustration, it occurred to me that it would be really cool if the cave was lit by bioluminescence, and after a little research I learned that the glow worms that light up caves are from the genus Arachnocampa and are native to Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania. Arachnocampa are part of a big diverse group of gnats called fungus gnats – family Mycetophilida – that were “well established and diversified by the Cretaceous period at the latest (wikipedia)”. Geology, fossil evidence, and shared flora and fauna all suggest that New Zealand and Tazmania separated from Australia toward the end of the Cretaceous. Thus, the modern geographic range of these glow worms suggests that they were present on the Australian continent toward the end of the age of dinosaurs when New Zealand and Tazmania separated. Thus it seems entirely possible these strange glowing insect larvae illuminated caves that the dinosaurs of Mesozoic Australia wandered into…
The dinosaurs in the illustration are based on the highly fragmentary Diamantinasaurus, because they lived in ancient Australia, and because they were possibly armoured like their close relatives Saltasaurus. I thought it would be cool to draw a speculatively armored sauropod because, 1) armor looks rad, and 2) armor requires a lot of minerals (especially calcium) to grow. In the case of Saltasaurus, the armor is a series of bony knobs called osteoderms, which start as keratinous scales, that are reinforced with bone as the animal grows. That inspired me to speculate that perhaps during the phase in their life where they are rapidly growing and hardening their integument, they made a habit of visiting caves to boost up on calcium and other important trace minerals not easily acquired elsewhere. This caused me to begin speculating as to what other adaptations dinosaurs who frequently ventured into caves might’ve developed as they became more and more specialized for dark environments. If indeed, venturing into caves became an essential part of these animals’ life cycle, perhaps then they would have evolved such features as the whisker-like scales on their faces and the reflective display scales I depicted them with on their heads and necks. It seems to me that if the diversity of dinosaur integuments seen in the fossil record is to inform how we imagine the skin features we can’t see in the fossil record, we should imagine dinosaur skin texture and function as diverse and highly adaptable. Growing fossil evidence suggests that the adaptive flexibility of dinosaurs’ skin and scales were a significant factor them so successful for so long. Even just within the theropods we see everything from scales, to osteoderms, horns, fuzz, feathers, quills, exposed bare skin – and often with several of these different features within the same animal.
But who knows… While fossils of large animals are known from ice age caves, I don’t know of any Mesozoic fossils coming from cave systems. Perhaps most cave systems are too unstable to last so long as to survive from the mesozoic to the present, or perhaps we just haven’t been looking in the right places. Based on modern animals, I think it’s safe to assume that dinosaurs and other mesozoic monsters colonized and exploited cave environments, perhaps even adapting into obligate cave dwellers, whose bizarre remains lie undiscovered in some hidden cavity in the geological bowels of the earth…
Oh, and here is the pencil drawing of the above illustration before it was colored:
Earth Beasts Update: I just got back from the mountains where I finished shooting the music video for ‘In Mountains’ from my old album Earth Beasts Awaken. I needed a few more shots that I wasn’t able to shoot last winter, and I am (finally) entering post production in ernest. I hope to have it done sometime in the next month or two. Here is a picture of the historian finding a mysterious blood-painting on a snowy boulder…
While I was in the mountains I also finished shooting a music video for my friend Steven Doman’s new album A Tertian Leap. The album is a spaced-out ambient mixture of instruments and electronic elements, so the music video we shot is an atmospheric sci-fi story about two people separated by an expanse of space. I’ve known Steven his whole life, and over the years he’s helped me with a ton of my projects, so I went all out on the video for him. Here is a picture of a crashed spaceship I built for the project:
So here’s the deal. I’m trying to make better and better music videos (like this one and this one), but as you may have noticed, better music videos take longer to finish. So, what I’m trying to do between finishing big projects, is to put out more regular quick rap performance videos (like this old one and this new one) and more frequent illustrations of dinosaurs and monsters and stuff like that.
download All Always Was.mp3
(right click to download)
all always was, and forever will be
in endless cycles of self destruction
and re-creation
From the moment I first heard Warcloud’s (aka Holocaust’s) barraging, eidetic lyrical style I wanted to direct a music video inspired by the imagery in his lyrics. I was able to get in touch with his fellow American Poet, Nova Kane, and when Warcloud got let out (he was locked up for 3 years for fighting) Nova got in touch with me and asked me to direct a video for this track. We had a ton of fun making this, lurking around Los Angeles China Town and filming fight sequences in the Malibu hills, and I hope it’s fun to watch.
If you want to hear more of The American Poets 2099, You can preview the album and support the artists by purchasing it here:
http://www.undergroundhiphop.com/american-poets-2099-murderous-poetry
Thanks again to everyone who helped make shooting this video possible. So much goddamn fun.
WEAPON FACTORY!! WEAPON FACTORY!!
-historian
Quick update: in addition to recently finishing principal photography on the first of the Earth Beast Awaken music videos I also just finished shooting a music video for a west coast underground rap collective called American Poets 2099. The track is from their latest release ‘Murderous Poetry’ and features the founding core members of the group; the infamous Warcloud (aka Holocaust, Acatraz, Robot Tank), Nova Kane and Pro The Leader.
You can preview the album and support the artists by purchasing it here:
http://www.undergroundhiphop.com/american-poets-2099-murderous-poetry
You can also check out other American Poets 2099 stuff on their website:
http://www.knowthenames.com
I had a lot of fun shooting the videos and my thanks goes out to all who helped. I hope to have post production for the American Poets video finished sometime in the next few weeks. Stay tuned…